A fundamental American question is, 'What's the big idea?'
P. J. O'Rourke
Related
I can tell you that you will have your hearts broken more by the people you love than by the people ...
MARGARET PETERSON HADDIX I'm still a big 'Grey's Anatomy' fan.
BROOKE ELLIOTT Are you taking us to the beach?" - Dan Cahill
JUDE WATSON Let's head out to the ruins." - Dan Cahill
ROLAND SMITH It looks ancient," - Amy Cahill
JUDE WATSON It SMELLS ancient," - Dan Cahill
JUDE WATSON Palm trees were fanned by a warm, light breeze, and they rolled down their windows to smell the sea.
JUDE WATSON I used to watch 'Grey's Anatomy' pretty religiously.
ERINN HAYES About f-f-ace!" she said to the horse, flailing with her boots. "Into the barn, please. It's time fo...
PETER LERANGIS You see?" Damien leaned over his desk and spread out half a dozen charcoal sketches. "These are only...
RICK RIORDAN I've got a few ideas," (Amy) admitted. "But I don't know where we're going in the long term. I mean ...
RICK RIORDAN Alas, I think I am becoming a god.
TITUS Some men by ancestry are only the shadow of a mighty name.
LUCAN I have a wife, I have sons: all of them hostages given to fate.
LUCAN I always find Victoria's Secret models a bit weird.
EDIE CAMPBELL Don't have to see," the pilot grunted. "Olga knows the way."
"Funny name for an aircraft...
GORDON KORMAN Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.
SENECA Drunkenness is nothing but voluntary madness.
SENECA We never reflect how pleasant it is to ask for nothing.
SENECA Just as I shall select my ship when I am about to go on a voyage, or my house when I propose to take...
SENECA Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.
SENECA Luck is where opportunity meets preparation.
SENECA Friendship always benefits; love sometimes injures.
SENECA I'm proud to say that I was that guy playing the character of Dr. Burke on 'Grey's Anato...
ISAIAH WASHINGTON Before 'Grey's Anatomy,' I was doing musicals, plays, commercials, you name it.
CHANDRA WILSON I was looking for a name with an old English sound, very easy to pronounce in every language and eas...
DIEGO DELLA VALLE I love to get to that place where I don't know what kind of music I'm doing; I don't kno...
ARIEL PINK I definitely love 'Camelot.' It's my favorite show. I'm a big 'True Blood' f...
TAMALA JONES One of the fundamental questions of today's world is undoubtedly the question of equitable globa...
JANEZ DRNOVSEK They got rid of bottled water. We got thermoses that say 'Grey's Anatomy Season 4' with ...
BROOKE SMITH Whenever anyone calls me 'The new J..K. Rowling,' I think, 'What's wrong with the ol...
SAMANTHA SHANNON But as you say, the fundamental stumbling block is the question of the future of the economy. And it...
JOE SLOVO It's the combination: big idea with a good entrepreneur: there's nothing more powerful.
BILL DRAYTON It's not a question of size, of whether it's a small or a big thing, but of what it has the ...
CHARLOTTE CASIRAGHI I'm not sure what theory is, unless it's the pursuit of fundamental questions.
DAVID ANTIN There's no question that how Johannesburg operates is what made me interested in the idea of wea...
NEILL BLOMKAMP One of the most fundamental questions people have about defense attorneys is, 'How can you do th...
DAVID E. KELLEY The question of what it is to live an 'authentic life', that's a complicated one.
EDDIE REDMAYNE It's not always the case that doing what's right is also doing what's smart, but when it...
GERALD CHERTAVIAN The most important question in American cinema, I've learned, is 'When is lunch?'
TOMMY LEE JONES This obsession with leadership... It's not neutral; it's American, this idea of the heroic l...
HENRY MINTZBERG 'Broadway' is one of the big American words. It's exciting to be given the chance to rat...
LYDIA LEONARD La vida es un regalo diario. Valóralo. Al final, lo que importa no son los años de vida, sino la v...
PAOLA CALASANZ ''DULCINEA'' I don't design. I get what I think is a big idea, and I put the idea down. I'm not a designe...
GEORGE LOIS It's not a question of McDonald's vanishing from the face of the earth. It's a question ...
ERIC SCHLOSSER The common question that gets asked in business is, 'why?' That's a good question, but a...
JEFF BEZOS I'm a big-city boy. What I like is big cities. It's not just what I like. It's what I wr...
SALMAN RUSHDIE 'Shall We Dance?' takes a small, exquisite Japanese movie and turns it into a big, stupid Am...
STEPHEN HUNTER Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?'
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. People always ask what kind of restaurant we have, and it's like a five-minute conversation. The...
KIMBAL MUSK I'm going to put a museum on my ranch and people keep saying, 'That's a huge idea.' ...
VAL KILMER You win a race, the next race it's a question mark. Are you still the best or not? That's wh...
MICHAEL SCHUMACHER Celebrity is a big part of the American social system. I'm certainly grateful for what it's ...
ROBERT REDFORD There's a phrase in Shakespeare: he refers to it as the 'hidden imposthume', and this id...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE When you get back to fundamental questions - 'Why should anything exist?' A, I'm not sur...
JOHN RHYS-DAVIES The big question is: When will the term structure of interest rates change? That's the question ...
RAY DALIO Thanksgiving is probably my favorite holiday - it's a day that's American to the core and it...
MARCUS SAMUELSSON It's fundamental to succeed in coming into contact with your subject. Whether it's a big Hol...
DOUGLAS KIRKLAND I really like Ariana Grande, Jessie J, and Nicki Minaj's song, the 'Bang Bang' song. It&...
BECKY G It's absolutely of no importance who or what V was under the mask. He isn't a who or a what,...
DAVID LLOYD It's important for American soldiers to be culturally sensitive when deployed in foreign countri...
GARY BAUER Israel's pro-American orientation exists not just among Israeli elites but also among the whole ...
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN There's always a question of duration, there's a question of who the orchestra is. No one is...
MICHAEL NYMAN War is a fundamental aspect of human existence. It's good to know what war entails and what the ...
TIM O'BRIEN Principle says it's not who put forth an idea. It's not the position of the person who put f...
DAN WEBSTER The main question in drama, the way I was taught, is always, 'What does the protagonist want?...
DAVID MAMET The informing idea of what you want to say and do, that's what will take you from film school to...
WILLIAM FRIEDKIN I don't pay that much attention to sales figures or awards. To me, the big question is: 'Did...
STEPHAN PASTIS What's wonderful about 'Star Trek' having been rebooted so successfully by the J. J. Abr...
ROBERT PICARDO I like stories in specific time periods. 'The Revenant's' era of American history was fa...
LEONARDO DICAPRIO Whether it's people walking off 'The View' when Bill O'Reilly makes a statement abou...
ERIC CANTOR Do you follow American politics? They hate Obama. Hate him. He's a black man. That's what it...
IAN MCSHANE The question isn't, 'What do we want to know about people?', It's, 'What do peop...
MARK ZUCKERBERG On 'Grey's Anatomy,' I didn't have to move too much. I think I ran through the hospi...
ERIC DANE I think talking about one's love life is always... It's a Pandora's box, best kept in jo...
EMMA CAULFIELD Nocebos often cause a physical effect, but it's not a physically produced effect. What's the...
IRVING KIRSCH It's never a question of skin pigmentation. It's never a question of just culture or sexual ...
CORNEL WEST The Civil Rights for Musicians Act is about economic justice for African American artists. It's ...
DIONNE WARWICK Oh, I'm all about small business. I think what we've learned from big business and big Wall ...
ROBERT HERJAVEC J. Cole's 2014 'Forrest Hills Drive.' The album, artwork, and director of that album was...
HASAN MINHAJ The gummy bears tattoo was my idea. It's my son's favorite candy. The sketch was my other so...
PRINCE FIELDER In athletics, the idea of possibility is presumed. It's not 'if;' it's 'how.'...
AIMEE MULLINS The American president isn't just the American president. He's going to be the leader of the...
PILOU ASBAEK Most big cities like London and Glasgow have great big rivers that are unmissable. What's brilli...
ANTONY GORMLEY We're in the dark ages if J-Lo can have a music career because of her ass. And let's face it...
JACK BLACK When people ask what 'American Pie' is about, they're missing the point. The song isn...
DON MCLEAN I think it's a fundamental responsibility of the federal government to enforce our nation's ...
PAT TOOMEY Anybody who's ever gone through a hard time - any outsider's perception, no matter how much ...
AMY GRANT J. P. Morgan. He was kind of a douche.
T. J. MILLER Big companies have trouble with innovation. Innovation is about bad ideas, or ideas that look like b...
BEN HOROWITZ I think O. J. Simpson was a very prominent figure in the African-American community. He was sort of ...
STERLING K. BROWN I think it's really cool how J. Lo's been able to balance an acting career and a music caree...
VICTORIA JUSTICE I have no idea what's next. I simply don't have a clue.
LANCE BURTON The major international appeal for 'House of Cards' was kind of a surprise because it's ...
TED SARANDOS When it's all said and done, jazz with a capital J is where I'm coming from. Dexter Gordon, ...
JOSE JAMES What I can't tell is, I don't know if there's a subliminal resistance to the idea of a s...
ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER I've no idea what Eddie Irvine's orders are, but he's following them superlatively well.
MURRAY WALKER if you can't have the one you love, you can love the one you have
IRAZ 'DEALOVA' My children have very little interest in my work. The most important question they have for me is, &...
MARIA DOYLE KENNEDY In 1870 [during the first Vatican Council], Catholics were struggling with the question of what it m...
JAY P. DOLAN
More P. J. O'Rourke
Don't send funny greeting cards on birthdays or at Christmas. Save them for funerals, when their...
P. J. O'ROURKE The proper behavior all through the holiday season is to be drunk. This drunkenness culminates on Ne...
P. J. O'ROURKE A man generally has two reasons for doing a thing. One that sounds good, and a real one.
J. P. MORGAN When you expect things to happen - strangely enough - they do happen.
J. P. MORGAN Well, I don't know as I want a lawyer to tell me what I cannot do. I hire him to tell how to do ...
J. P. MORGAN If you have to ask how much it costs, you can't afford it.
J. P. MORGAN No problem can be solved until it is reduced to some simple form. The changing of a vague difficulty...
J. P. MORGAN I got disappointed in human nature as well and gave it up because I found it too much like my own.
J. P. DONLEAVY To marry the Irish is to look for poverty.
J. P. DONLEAVY Writing is turning one's worst moments into money.
J. P. DONLEAVY Political systems are run by self-selecting politicians. We don't draft people; it's not jur...
P. J. O'ROURKE My mom is a sculptress.
P. J. HARVEY I'm not an autobiographical writer, but I am a writer who deals with human emotion on all levels...
P. J. HARVEY I've always felt that I'm affected by the world, by the way we treat each other, by the way ...
P. J. HARVEY There's also a level of discipline I use as a writer, designed to get better at what I'm doi...
P. J. HARVEY I'm probably much more influenced by film-makers and painters than I am by other songwriters or ...
P. J. HARVEY I did photography, painting, and drawing, but I prefer sculpture. I like it because it's very ph...
P. J. HARVEY I'm a very private person, so obviously I don't enjoy talking about more personal matters.
P. J. HARVEY My father is actually a quarry man - he deals in stone. He also at one point had a lot of sheep, he ...
P. J. HARVEY With songs I almost see the images, see the action, and then all I have to do is describe it. It'...
P. J. HARVEY I decide immediately if I like a person and if I do, then I'm myself, and if I don't, then I...
P. J. HARVEY I'm a Libra. That means that I can make a decision, but only after much thought.
P. J. HARVEY There's so much you can do with laying words on a bed of music. You can completely change their ...
P. J. HARVEY People have a tendency to see country life through rose-colored glasses.
P. J. HARVEY It's so much in me to want to keep experimenting all the time. It's just inherent. Therefore...
P. J. HARVEY Making me into a role model is placing too much importance on what I see as a work in progress.
P. J. HARVEY I'm not a writer where I feel particularly blessed by great inspiration every day. I don't. ...
P. J. HARVEY I work on words quite separately to music. They're both ongoing, and I don't ever feel like ...
P. J. HARVEY There is nothing more boring than doing singing exercises.
P. J. HARVEY People like Howlin' Wolf, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, John Lee Hooker, Nina Simone, Captain B...
P. J. HARVEY I firmly disbelieve that one has to be a tortured soul to write good music.
P. J. HARVEY I don't loathe interviews, I'm just one of those people who makes music because I find it di...
P. J. HARVEY I think that's always very valuable: to keep the mind open to receiving all sorts of information...
P. J. HARVEY I tried to use words that were dealing with the emotional quality that any human being could recogni...
P. J. HARVEY I didn't know folk music growing up, no. It's something I've come to study, really, beca...
P. J. HARVEY I've always been very visceral in that I feel things very deeply.
P. J. HARVEY Popular culture has become engorged, broadening and thickening until it's the only culture anyon...
P. J. O'ROURKE The best and brightest don't go into politics. The best and brightest are at Goldman Sachs.
P. J. O'ROURKE In Israel, waves of anger and fear circulate all the time, but so do jokes and gossip and silky even...
P. J. O'ROURKE People say, 'Oh, politics is so polarized today,' and I'm thinking... '1861, that wa...
P. J. O'ROURKE Never be unfaithful to a lover, except with your wife.
P. J. O'ROURKE I am unboreable in the great outdoors.
P. J. O'ROURKE To mistrust science and deny the validity of scientific method is to resign your job as a human. You...
P. J. O'ROURKE Most people sort of enjoy going to work because of the socialisation, a chance to flirt with co-work...
P. J. O'ROURKE Hubris is one of the great renewable resources.
P. J. O'ROURKE The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove t...
P. J. O'ROURKE Soccer matches should be something special, something people eagerly look forward to, something that...
P. J. O'ROURKE Cleanliness becomes more important when godliness is unlikely.
P. J. O'ROURKE Guns are the ultimate bulwark against government misbehavior.
P. J. O'ROURKE Tom DeLay may or may not have broken campaign finance laws, but he did his best to look like he was ...
P. J. O'ROURKE If you talk to most businessmen, they'll say that what they do is for the public good, but you k...
P. J. O'ROURKE Some day you will be wheeled in for a heart bypass operation, and a surgeon will be the person who i...
P. J. O'ROURKE Californians devised a system of electricity sales that ignored every dimension of the free market.
P. J. O'ROURKE Californians are people who insist on growing their own vegetables, but they won't dig up the pr...
P. J. O'ROURKE Gay marriage acceptance is happening in the blink of an eye.
P. J. O'ROURKE Passover is my idea of a perfect holiday. Dear God, when you're handing out plagues of darkness,...
P. J. O'ROURKE Will Generation X and the Millennials do a better job running the world than the boomers have? Let...
P. J. O'ROURKE Freedom is not empowerment. Empowerment is what the Serbs have in Bosnia. Anybody can grab a gun and...
P. J. O'ROURKE Making fun of born-again Christians is like hunting dairy cows with a high powered rifle and scope.
P. J. O'ROURKE Life is just a dirty four-letter word: W-O-R-K.
J. P. MCEVOY Old age adds to the respect due to virtue, but it takes nothing from the contempt inspired by vice; ...
J. P. SENN Politics are for foreigners with their endless wrongs and paltry rights. Politics are a lousy way to...
P. J. O'ROURKE Our democracy, our culture, our whole way of life is a spectacular triumph of the blah. Why not have...
P. J. O'ROURKE Russians not only vehemently despise blacks, they believe Africa begins at the Ukraine border.
P. J. O'ROURKE Writing is turning one's worst moments into money.
J. P. DONLEAVY My definition of an expert in any field is a person who knows enough about what's really going on to...
P. J. PLAUGER In our brief national history we have shot four of our presidents, worried five of them to death, im...
P. J. O'ROURKE When you don't have any money, the problem is food, When you have money, it's sex. When you have bot...
J. P. DONLEAVY Nothing bad is going to happen to us. If we get fired, it's not failure; its a midlife vocational re...
P. J. O'ROURKE Newsmen believe that news is a tacitly acknowledged fourth branch of the federal system. This is why...
P. J. O'ROURKE You can't get rid of poverty by giving people money.
P. J. O'ROURKE People are all exactly alike. There's no such thing as a race and barely such a thing as an ethnic g...
P. J. O'ROURKE I am a journalist and, under the modern journalist's code of Olympian objectivity (and total purity ...
P. J. O'ROURKE Seriousness is stupidity sent to college.
P. J. O'ROURKE Good manners are a combination of intelligence, education, taste and style mixed together so that yo...
P. J. O'ROURKE The principle feature of American liberalism is sanctimoniousness. By loudly denouncing all bad thin...
P. J. O'ROURKE In the end we beat them with Levi 501 jeans. Seventy-two years of Communist indoctrination and propa...
P. J. O'ROURKE Marijuana is self-punishing. It makes you acutely sensitive, and in this world, what worse punishmen...
P. J. O'ROURKE No drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the sources ...
P. J. O'ROURKE Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the ...
P. J. O'ROURKE Authority has always attracted the lowest elements in the human race. All through history mankind ha...
P. J. O'ROURKE When I die I want to decompose in a barrel of porter and have it served in all the pubs in Dublin.
J. P. DONLEAVY The government is huge, stupid, greedy and makes nosy, officious and dangerous intrusions into the s...
P. J. O'ROURKE But Jesus, when you don't have any money, the problem is food. When you have money, it's sex. When y...
J. P. DONLEAVY Social Security is a government program with a constituency made up of the old, the near old and tho...
P. J. O'ROURKE Majority rule is a precious, sacred thing worth dying for. But -- like other precious, sacred things...
P. J. O'ROURKE Farm policy, although it's complex, can be explained. What it can't be is believed. No cheating spou...
P. J. O'ROURKE Government proposes, bureaucracy disposes. And the bureaucracy must dispose of government proposals ...
P. J. O'ROURKE Automobiles are free of egotism, passion, prejudice and stupid ideas about where to have dinner. The...
P. J. O'ROURKE There's no telling what might have happened to our defense budget if Saddam Hussein hadn't invaded K...
P. J. O'ROURKE One of the annoying things about believing in free will and individual responsibility is the difficu...
P. J. O'ROURKE Some people are better imagined in one's bed than found there in the morning.
P. J. O'ROURKE There are a number of mechanical devices which increase sexual arousal, particularly in women. Chief...
P. J. O'ROURKE Old age adds to the respect due to virtue, but it takes nothing from the contempt inspired by vice...
J. P. SENN Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy, the whores are us.
P. J. O'ROURKE A man always has two reasons for doing anything--a good reason and the real reason.
J. P. MORGAN Agriculture is a business that has been up to its bib overalls in politics since the first Thanksgiv...
P. J. O'ROURKE Supposedly, summer vacation happens because that's when the kids are home from school, although ...
P. J. O'ROURKE Sheep farming is heavily subsidized in Great Britain. Without the subsidies, the green grazing in th...
P. J. O'ROURKE Arab-led Islamic fundamentalism destabilizes nations from Algeria to the Philippines.
P. J. O'ROURKE What Alexander Graham Bell thought up occupied less space than a flower vase. Now it's so small ...
P. J. O'ROURKE Adam Smith is misread as being amoral precisely because people don't read his first book, becaus...
P. J. O'ROURKE The whole melodrama of the Middle East would be improved if amnesia were as common here as it is in ...
P. J. O'ROURKE Chinese economic development has cost many American workers their jobs. That's the price of prog...
P. J. O'ROURKE The 1960s was an era of big thoughts. And yet, amazingly, each of these thoughts could fit on a T-sh...
P. J. O'ROURKE What is obnoxious about the motives of politicians - whatever those motives may be - is that politic...
P. J. O'ROURKE I'm old enough to remember when the air over American cities was a lot dirtier than it is now.
P. J. O'ROURKE The Nobel Peace Prize has always been a joke - albeit a grim one. Alfred Bernhard Nobel famously inv...
P. J. O'ROURKE Banning paper and plastic and making shoppers carry their groceries home in their mouths like dogs i...
P. J. O'ROURKE The young are adept at learning, but even more adept at avoiding it.
P. J. O'ROURKE Global warming is a fact. Now it's up to liberals to make it a reality. Hence there is crucial i...
P. J. O'ROURKE Adam Smith pointed out that there were three things that make us more prosperous, in a general sort ...
P. J. O'ROURKE Upbeat is for people who want to feel good about their cause: the reformers, the progressives, the r...
P. J. O'ROURKE Modern elites live in bubbles of liberal affluence like Ann Arbor, Brookline, the Upper West Side, P...
P. J. O'ROURKE Never wear anything that panics the cat.
P. J. O'ROURKE Think what evil creeps liberals would be if their plans to enfeeble the individual, exhaust the econ...
P. J. O'ROURKE Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
P. J. O'ROURKE Everybody knows how to raise children, except the people who have them.
P. J. O'ROURKE If you are young and you drink a great deal it will spoil your health, slow your mind, make you fat ...
P. J. O'ROURKE There is no virtue in compulsory government charity, and there is no virtue in advocating it. A poli...
P. J. O'ROURKE Each child is biologically required to have a mother. Fatherhood is a well-regarded theory, but moth...
P. J. O'ROURKE Gun violence has cost us too many political leaders, and hardly ever the worst ones.
P. J. O'ROURKE The two most frightening words in Washington are 'bipartisan consensus.' Bipartisan consensu...
P. J. O'ROURKE Computers seem a little too adaptively flexible, like the strange natives, odd societies, and head c...
P. J. O'ROURKE I live in New Hampshire. We're in favor of global warming. Eleven hundred more feet of sea-level...
P. J. O'ROURKE A man always has two reasons for doing anything: a good reason and the real reason.
J. P. MORGAN People are not ants or bees. We do not reason or love or live or die collectively.
P. J. O'ROURKE The idea of a stag hunt evokes chivalry - knights in jerkins and hose, ladies on sidesaddles with wi...
P. J. O'ROURKE Why do elites hate the poor? It's xenophobia. They don't know any poor people - except their...
P. J. O'ROURKE Family love is messy, clinging, and of an annoying and repetitive pattern, like bad wallpaper.
P. J. O'ROURKE Watching Republicans in Washington is like watching lemmings, if lemmings jumped into cesspools inst...
P. J. O'ROURKE Disney's House of the Future had the clean simplicity prized in the 1950s as relief from decades...
P. J. O'ROURKE All business is capitalistic. You require capital for any sort of business endeavour.
P. J. O'ROURKE The great apologist has to have lived large and wild. If he's going to kiss the world's boo-...
P. J. O'ROURKE 'Carrie' was a pretty big-budget movie at a real studio, with a director that had already do...
P. J. SOLES I like making things. I have a wood shop at home. I am a terrible carpenter but I love doing it.
P. J. O'ROURKE Mikhail Gorbachev was the Jimmy Carter of the Communist bloc. The Russians hate him.
P. J. O'ROURKE Jimmy Carter was - he still - he remains to this day America's most ex of ex-presidents. You jus...
P. J. O'ROURKE There is a simple rule here, a rule of legislation, a rule of business, a rule of life: beyond a cer...
P. J. O'ROURKE In Henry Adams, I discovered not only the prototype of the modern thinker but also someone who is mo...
P. J. O'ROURKE Everybody with a gun has a checkpoint in Lebanon. And in Lebanon, you'd be crazy not to have a g...
P. J. O'ROURKE A U.S. dollar is an IOU from the Federal Reserve Bank. It's a promissory note that doesn't a...
P. J. O'ROURKE Our earliest evidence of government, in the ruins of Babylon and Egypt, shows nothing but ziggurats ...
P. J. O'ROURKE The baby boomers' politics have covered a wide band of silliness, from the Weather Underground t...
P. J. O'ROURKE Now, do I think the baby boomers tend to be self-absorbed? I do.
P. J. O'ROURKE Excessive speed and quantity are, like chattiness and digression, besetting sins of cyber-assisted a...
P. J. O'ROURKE The car provided Americans with an enviable standard of living. You could not get a steady job with ...
P. J. O'ROURKE Of course, no one wants to ban the vote. Voting should remain available for sporting and recreationa...
P. J. O'ROURKE You're not a baby boomer if you don't have a visceral recollection of a Kennedy and a King a...
P. J. O'ROURKE You know your children are growing up when they stop asking you where they came from and refuse to t...
P. J. O'ROURKE Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for ...
P. J. O'ROURKE There's a certain kind of behavior in the Arab world that, to me, resembles the way young men be...
P. J. O'ROURKE The U.S. tax code was written by A students. Every April 15, we have to pay somebody who got an A in...
P. J. O'ROURKE We loved cars until the '70s or so. Then they became appliances. They turned into motorized cup ...
P. J. O'ROURKE I'm on Medicare now. If I go and have a big operation, it costs me nothing. It should cost me a ...
P. J. O'ROURKE I literally left school and went straight into music via art college for a year, and I've been s...
P. J. HARVEY Go as far as you can see; when you get there, you'll be able to see farther.
J. P. MORGAN Kabul is a walled city, which sounds romantic except the walls are pre-cast reinforced concrete blas...
P. J. O'ROURKE Some taxpayers may object to a print journalism bailout on the grounds that it mostly benefits the l...
P. J. O'ROURKE The great majority of Baghdad is a slum - a lot of it's new, but it's still slum. It's u...
P. J. O'ROURKE As a nation, Kuwait has been, arguably, free of freedom itself. Claimed in turn by Constantinople, R...
P. J. O'ROURKE What Enron was doing, what caused investors to embrace it in a rapture of baffled awe, was hiding de...
P. J. O'ROURKE There are a number of Americans who shouldn't vote. The number is 57 percent, to judge by the co...
P. J. O'ROURKE The good news is that, according to the Obama administration, the rich will pay for everything. The ...
P. J. O'ROURKE A Kindle returns us to the inconvenience of the scroll, except with batteries and electronic glitche...
P. J. O'ROURKE Government is a health hazard. Governments have killed many more people than cigarettes or unbuckled...
P. J. O'ROURKE If it were not for government regulation of big corporations, executives at companies like Enron, Wo...
P. J. O'ROURKE You can learn all about the human condition from covering the crime beat in a big city - you don'...
P. J. O'ROURKE The perpetuation of slavery, the exile and extermination of American Indians, and the passage of Jim...
P. J. O'ROURKE Northwest Ohio is flat. There isn't much up. The land is so flat that a child from Toledo is und...
P. J. O'ROURKE The 20th century was a test bed for big ideas - fascism, communism, the atomic bomb.
P. J. O'ROURKE Preachers at black churches are the last people left in the English-speaking world who know the sche...
P. J. O'ROURKE Politics is a necessary evil, or a necessary annoyance, a necessary conundrum.
P. J. O'ROURKE If I were a congressman who had voted for the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004, I'd claim it w...
P. J. O'ROURKE The inherent purpose of American government is let people seek their own goals and to encourage them...
P. J. O'ROURKE Detroit's industrial ruins are picturesque, like crumbling Rome in an 18th-century etching.
P. J. O'ROURKE I like fiction and the kind of history that gives the grace and flavor of fiction to the past. No bl...
P. J. O'ROURKE Daniel Patrick Moynihan is the archetypal extremely smart person who went into politics anyway inste...
P. J. O'ROURKE Kids are disorganized.
P. J. O'ROURKE People say free trade causes dislocation. In actual fact, it's the lowering of trade barriers th...
P. J. O'ROURKE Distracting a politician from governing is like distracting a bear from eating your baby.
P. J. O'ROURKE Writing is turning one's worst moments into money.
J P DONLEAVY Inside every Sancho Panza there's a Don Quixote struggling to get out.
P. J. O'ROURKE Wealth is not a pizza, where if I have too many slices you have to eat the Domino's box.
P. J. O'ROURKE In Hong Kong there is agglomeration beyond my fondest imaginings. The Kowloon district claims a popu...
P. J. O'ROURKE There are plenty of problems in the world, and doubtless climate change - or whatever the currently ...
P. J. O'ROURKE Kuwait City is not gorgeous, actually, but it's got a kind of Epcot Center thing going for it. I...
P. J. O'ROURKE The importance of local governance may not be obvious to an America accustomed to treating city and ...
P. J. O'ROURKE Political discourse has become so rotten that it's no longer possible to tell the stench of one ...
P. J. O'ROURKE Israel is slightly smaller than New Jersey. Moses in effect led the tribes of Israel out of the Dist...
P. J. O'ROURKE It could be that all awful dictators are frustrated artists - Mao with his poetry and Mussolini with...
P. J. O'ROURKE I'm too tough and sensitive to have to have some pubescent twerp with his mom's earring in h...
P. J. O'ROURKE Earnestness is stupidity sent to college.
P. J. O'ROURKE Even very young children need to be informed about dying. Explain the concept of death very carefull...
P. J. O'ROURKE I like to think of my behavior in the sixties as a learning experience. Then again, I like to think ...
P. J. O'ROURKE The purpose of a funeral service is to comfort the living. It is important at a funeral to display e...
P. J. O'ROURKE There's a whiff of the lynch mob or the lemming migration about any overlarge concentration of like-...
P. J. O'ROURKE With Epcot Center the Disney corporation has accomplished something I didn't think possible in today...
P. J. O'ROURKE When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are le...
P. J. O'ROURKE Very little is known of the Canadian country since it is rarely visited by anyone but the Queen and ...
P. J. O'ROURKE